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Foobar

355 points| franze | 11 years ago |google.com | reply

169 comments

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[+] bshimmin|11 years ago|reply
I think this is very clever. Assuming this is something to do with recruitment (as the other comments suggest), then of course I find it intensely irritating and it confirms my pre-existing notion that I would never want to work for a company like Google. But, on the other hand, the people who devised this puzzle are clearly people who would be enticed by a puzzle like it, and would therefore think it was a good way to find like-minded people - and they are probably correct in that assumption.
[+] jpfr|11 years ago|reply
No puzzle here. You can only log in if Google has flagged your search topics.

On google search, you have the variable window.location.search = "?gfe_rd=cr&ei=XXXGyZiVNHoFcuF8Qe7wYHACw&gws_rd=ssl"

That string is appended to the url of the iframe: src="https://foobar.withgoogle.com/"+window.location.search

[+] watty|11 years ago|reply
Why do you find it intensely irritating? Google's a massive company that employees all sorts of different professions and types of people. This puzzle isn't targeting you, seems successful to me.
[+] 1945795|11 years ago|reply
Why is this irritating? Google won't hire you iff you solve the puzzle, this is nothing more than a very popular way for institutions to generate free PR.
[+] GuiA|11 years ago|reply
The people making the big picture decisions are by far and large not the people who would be enticed by such a puzzle. Hence the dissonance you're observing. (applies to most large companies)
[+] mragh|11 years ago|reply
I've done a few exercises in the site. While recruitment seems most likely, I haven't seen anything that explicitly mentions applying to work at Google or anything like that. There are coding challenges and a gamified leveling system based on how many coding challenges you complete within the time limit, but no mention of applications.
[+] jmsduran|11 years ago|reply
I took a look at the site for 5 minutes. If I had the day off, I wouldn't mind spending some time attempting to solve it.
[+] teddyh|11 years ago|reply
Google is self-selecting to employ those people who are fine with the idea of Google recording everything they do. This does not bode well for the rest of us.
[+] AceJohnny2|11 years ago|reply
I submit that this is only one small tributary to their huge hiring flow, don't overstate the impact this small thing has on their overall culture.
[+] rational-future|11 years ago|reply
Only the very stupid are fine with Google recording everything they do.
[+] k-mcgrady|11 years ago|reply
If you are as confused as I was this old HN thread might help:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8588080

[+] mragh|11 years ago|reply
<- Author of that thread. The site is an interactive shell with progressively harder (but fun) coding challenges to complete. It's made to look like a *nix shell and has the basic commands built-in.

Also, there are a lot of rabbits.

[+] domas|11 years ago|reply
Looks like it's Google's recruiting for Python devs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8588080
[+] jcfrei|11 years ago|reply
Very interesting but I wonder what the legal implications are. Some companies might file a lawsuit claiming that Google gains an unfair advantage if they continue to seek potential employees this way. I'm not saying I agree with this view but Google does have a HUGE potential in matching employees with their potential employers and might just turn the recruitment services industry on its head.
[+] fizixer|11 years ago|reply
More like javascript/web-developer recruiting. The page-source doesn't contain anything other than html/css/js.
[+] dorkrawk|11 years ago|reply
I had the "You speak our language..." message pop up while searching for some Python info and send me to Foobar a few days ago. So far I've just done one of the challenges. I'm sure it's a recruiting thing, but they seem like fun puzzles and it's obviously not the only way to get a job with Google, so good for them for building something fun.
[+] theVirginian|11 years ago|reply
I search for python stuff all the time and have never come across this link, I want to do some puzzles too!
[+] nanoscopic|11 years ago|reply
Taking a look at the CSS code included on the page I see things related to "terminal-output" and "editor". This corresponds with what the poster says the page does. There seem to be "question_options" also; likely some sort of quiz. Also see reference to a countdown timer of some sort.

Note also that the application bounces you to /_ah/logout on deny. That is an admin URL within Google App Engine applications. I figure everything on "withgoogle.com" is hosted by GAE?

I checked waybackmachine for mirrors of older versions of the site, perhaps when it had more clues. Nothing. I did direct it to archive foobar.withgoogle.com though, since they did not yet have it cached.

[+] lazzlazzlazz|11 years ago|reply
Funny. Two years ago I had an on-site interview with Google. My recruiter understood that I was looking for a "data science" type position, and although I have Java and C experience, I preferred Python. He told me to expect interviewing in Python.

When I arrived, not a single one of the 5 technical interviewers I dealt with used Python and seemed to think I was crazy to be interviewing with Python. Needless to say, I did not receive an offer.

[+] toblender|11 years ago|reply
Same story for me, went for a front-end developer position, but didn't get any front-end developer questions.
[+] nanoscopic|11 years ago|reply
I think google should make a system where you can play these puzzles by simply asking to and then agreeing not to share your solutions with anyone.

That way, any hacker news people who would like to do so can.

Sure people could enable google search history and google random python stuff, but any privacy minded hackers will have that disabled permanently ( as I do ). I'd like to note that I actually googled python lambda's myself recently, attempting to ascertain whether "lambda:0" is really the shortest way to make an empty object in python...

The fact that google themselves hasn't commented on this hacker news thread itself is somewhat disappointing to me.

[+] sltkr|11 years ago|reply
> attempting to ascertain whether "lambda:0" is really the shortest way to make an empty object in python...

In what sense does "lambda:0" create an empty object? And how is it better than "object()"?

[+] DanielBMarkham|11 years ago|reply
For those who are confused, the local papers say Google is looking to hire 30K people?

I believe this app/page is part of that push. Bunch of problems to complete.

[+] izolate|11 years ago|reply
Surely not all programmers? Because if so, I may just be able to slip through the cracks!
[+] toblender|11 years ago|reply
I got a little further.

If you append /login to the url, you get another script:

Points to:

https://foobar.withgoogle.com/_ah/logout?continue=https://ww...

I've tried some ways to login to appengine etc but didn't work.

https://appengine.google.com/_ah/logout?continue=https://foo...

I've managed to get it to log me out of my google account. Not sure what's up.

[+] toblender|11 years ago|reply
Also I get:

<span class="term-red">Error(6): Login unavailable. Try again later.</span>

[+] codecondo|11 years ago|reply
I'm guessing in order to successfully log-in, you've to trigger yourself as someone who's eligible? Otherwise, it looks like everyone else is wondering how to make it work.
[+] NamTaf|11 years ago|reply
That sounds right, which implies that you have to be logged in to a google account and searching interesting terms to them. They'll redirect you to that and you can carry on.
[+] rmsaksida|11 years ago|reply
I have search history disabled in my Google account settings. I guess that probably disables the login for me as well. I search for Python related stuff dozens of times a day.
[+] yojo|11 years ago|reply
Based on comments above, I: 1) Turned on google search history 2) searched for 'python lambda syntax' and 'mutex lock' 3) got the invite that opened the foo.bar UI

You get a terminal, from the terminal you request coding challenges. They have a minimal IDE to code in. Choice of language is Java or python. Only tried one challenge. YMMV

[+] drewthomas|11 years ago|reply
I got the invite a couple days ago but didn't "play" because I don't have the time or inclination, but I have to say the transition revealing the invite was pretty cool. Although I'm an app developer, based on my search history, I would say getting the invite is not based on how much or how often you search coding-related terms or your history of searching, but how nerdy your terms are, which alone is enough to overcome the barrier of entry (like the people here who triggered the invite searching for "python lambda" and "mutex lock"). So, after you get the invite and accept it, then you can log in on Foobar. The reason the HN link is so confusing is because the it goes to the Foobar login page, which assumes you already got the invite.
[+] jpgvm|11 years ago|reply
I am not sure that it's the normal kind of web puzzle.

The logins are being handled by an endpoint on AppEngine called 'ah'. Also this mysterious url: https://appengine.google.com/_ah/

Though there is definitely some semblance of it being a game, the iframe contains a reference to CSS file called rhgame.css.

There doesn't seem to be any avenue to log yourself in, by the looks of it they first send people to a registration URL of some description (probably a redirect from a specific set of search terms or something similar).

I am not really one for doing the kinds of puzzles where you just shoot in the dark for a while.. if there were actually clues/riddles hidden in the HTML/JS/CSS or similar then I would have alot more fun with it.

[+] kylebrown|11 years ago|reply
The puzzle is not figuring out how to log in. You get an invite, then you get the challenges: http://i.imgur.com/xtCdf94.png

They are story problems. The first one is cycle detection for a singly-linked list. After solving that, you can request another (time remaining is reset). In the math category, its a subset sum problem: http://pastebin.com/SEZXhKHY

[+] pranavpr|11 years ago|reply
It seems if you have searched something which Google has interest in, you would be allowed to login. Below code on page points towards this:

  var g=document.getElementById("g");g.src="https://foobar.withgoogle.com/"+window.location.search
[+] jordanpg|11 years ago|reply
My guess is that they have set up some pattern matching or keyword matching against search queries for some particular programming questions related to whatever they are hiring for. NLP, maybe?
[+] dchichkov|11 years ago|reply
Seems to be broken "message: '<span class="term-red">Error(6): Login unavailable. Try again later.</span>',"

Stay away. They would just waste your time.